RADIO signals from the moon can be heard, asserts Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor of the Naval Research Laboratory at Washington, D. C. The plan is to direct a short wave radio beam at the moon in such a manner that it will be reflected by the moon’s surface to produce an “echo” wave, audible through powerful receivers on earth some three seconds after the 500,000-mile trip through inter-stellar space.

STARTING from scratch eighteen months ago, F. L. Schlink, of Portland, Oregon, has made a profit from the beginning by selling, installing, and servicing of car radios exclusively. At the present time, he is the only one so specializing in The Pacific Northwest.

Early in 1932, he rented a small garage for a service shop. It would accommodate only four cars. He had only one service man and did all the selling himself, helping with the service work in spare moments. Even now, while engaged in bigger deals and more of them, if there comes a momentary interim between telephone calls or demonstrations to customers, he is into a car in an instant with pliers or test set, helping the men. It is this drive within him for utilizing every spare moment which, I believe, is in no small measure accountable for his success.

Is there any way this could possibly have worked? It seems like way too subtle a problem to solve just by matching certain frequencies. I’m sure you could program a computer to do a pretty good job of this now, but even that would have problems. And even if it worked, who’s to say a commercial can’t have music?

Device Shuts Off Radio Advertising; Tunes in Music

RADIO listeners who dislike advertising announcements and long speeches will welcome a new invention that automatically shuts off voice programs.

The device, known as the “radio advertising eliminator,” will operate the radio only when musical programs are coming over the air. Just as soon as any voice announcement is made from the station, the radio receiver is turned off and is not turned on again until the musical program resumes.

BIGGEST RADIO SET HAS FORTY TUBES
What is believed to be the largest and most powerful radio receiving set ever assembled is the latest achievement of a well-known Chicago radio engineer. Designed for world-wide reception on all wave lengths, the mammoth receiver has a complicated circuit which employs forty tubes. Five separate loudspeakers, operating simultaneously, cover a wide sound-frequency range, and give exceptional tonal quality. The total weight of the receiver, shown below, is 620 pounds.

REMOTE areas of Siberia and China use thermoelectric generators like the one shown here to convert heat from a kerosene lamp into electricity for radios.

The 20-lb. device is being studied by scientists at the Martin Co., Baltimore, Md., where similar direct conversion principles have been applied to nuclear heat sources. They paid $56 for the Russian-built device.

A series of thermocouples is arranged around the upper portion of the lamp. As each set of elements is heated at one end by the lamp, a small amount of electricity flows through the pair. Metallic fins remove the excess heat.

This is an interesting harbinger of the huge wave changes that occurred in the electronics industry in the 50 years after this article was published. What they’ve done here is essentially modularized an entire radio into plug and play components. Their reason for doing this was to make repair simpler, but now everything is designed that way so you can use standardized components and simplify assembly. If hundreds of different devices uses the same oscillator (or Ethernet controller for that matter) you can make them a lot cheaper.

Mother Could Fix This Radio

PSM photos by Robert F. Smith

YOU don’t need to know a coil from a condenser to fix this radio. Throw-away units, as easy to change as radio tubes, contain practically everything that might go wrong in the set. Six “canned” circuits with pronged bases, designed to retail in department stores at $1.85 apiece, replace the maze of wiring located in back of the dial of a conventional radio.

Warren H. Keates, of Philadelphia, is the proud possessor of a real radio set, which he perfected and built himself.

The set has 16 tubes, and has a receiving range of 7,000 miles. Getting such stations as 2LO, London; 2ZY, Manchester; the Eiffel Tower, Paris; Brussels, or even Rio de Janiero, Brazil, is a common occurrence with this set.

PUT a radio on your bicycle and enjoy your favorite programs while riding. The job is easily done. The full equipment is shown in the picture on the right. Attach a small radio set to a board fastened to the handle bars of the bicycle. To construct the antenna supports use bus bar or heavy wire fixed to the top of the radio set. The antenna and lead-in wire are plainly visible in the photograph. The battery supply is attached to the frame of the bicycle.

The radio equipped bicycle made its appearance in Hollywood where movie stars have made a fad of bicycle riding.

WHEN a voice from your radio says: “This is an electrical transcription,” don’t turn to another station, for what you are about to hear is one of the wonders of modern broadcasting. Last year the customers of one of the leading makers of electrical transcriptions for broadcasting purposes paid $30,000,000 for the records and station time.

It is a big business, this offspring of radio. Every broadcasting station in the United States, without exception, uses these “platters.” Many of the smaller stations depend on them for a majority of the time they are on the air each day.

Of course you probably have to plug this thing in to actually use it. I doubt they managed to cram batteries in there.

TINY RADIO BUILT IN CIGARETTE CASE
A radio built into a cigarette case was a novelty exhibited at a recent British radio exposition. The miniature receiver employs a single tube â€”one of the smallest in the worldâ€” and has a pair of midget tuning dials. Only half the thickness of the case is occupied by the set, ample room remaining for about a dozen cigarettes. The radio is turned on or off by means of a knob at the outer edge of the case, which is shown open in the accompanying photograph to reveal the compact units of the midget receiver.